Droughts, Gales & Refugees - Interesting Times Ahead For UK - Guardian

[hatrack]

This week's heatwave is only the beginning. The mercury may not have pipped the all-time record on Wednesday, but it is only a matter of time. Maybe not next week and maybe not next month, but soon. And for the rest of our lives. The planet is warming rapidly. Arctic ice is at record lows and the north pole could melt to open water sometime this century for the first time in some 40m years. The mighty West Antarctic ice sheet is creaking and dramatic changes are expected, from the Amazon rainforest to the Siberian permafrost. But what about the UK? What else does global warming have in store for our once green and pleasant land?

Peering into the future is a tricky business, especially for something as volatile as weather and climate. But scientists know a lot about how events will unfold. They use giant computer programs, evolved from those that make weather forecasts, to work out how the atmosphere will react to the blanket of carbon dioxide we humans are steadily wrapping around the planet. As we do, and as more of the sun's heat is unable to escape, the air and the sea warm. But that takes time, which means that whatever we do, our climate destiny is fixed for the next few decades.

Only now is the planet finally coming to terms with the carbon spewed into the atmosphere while the Beatles ruled the charts. And today's carbon pollution from cars, power-hungry plasma screen televisions and cheap flights will only wreak its havoc long after Coldplay and the Arctic Monkeys have faded into the distant past. That makes predictions over the next few decades pretty accurate. Beyond that, the picture is fuzzier but experts use various scenarios to bring it into focus, which differ depending on how quickly we switch from sources of energy that rely on carbon.

Here, we present a picture of what might happen in Britain over the next century if the world fails to take serious action, and global emissions continue to rise at about the same, or a slightly slower, rate. So what does it reveal? More good news than you may expect: British farmers may have something to smile about and the increased victims of heatstroke are more than compensated for by the thousands of vulnerable people saved from bitter winters. Summer fetes are less likely to be rained off and English wine could come in from the cold. But if that is the good news, here comes the bad: floods, malaria, shark attacks, sweltering summers and worsening drought. Rainfall will decline in the summer and the increased deluges in winter will struggle to replenish thirsty reservoirs because much of the water will run off the baked ground. Rapid changes in temperature will confuse wildlife and a white Christmas will be a distant dream.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1826470,00.html

Interesting projections follow.